Re: [Groff] Macro "itc" is needed to make escape "\c" useful

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi,

G. Branden Robinson wrote on Tue, May 02, 2017 at 11:48:56AM -0400:

> Note that the commits also affected the .SH, .SS, .B, .I, .SM, and .SB
> macros as well.  Basically it affected anything that set an input trap.

True.  What i committed to mandoc(1) so far only adjusts the block
macros (that is, .SH, .SS, .TP).  For those, the formatting damage
is most severe when \c is used in the way in question: The second
macro line that is intended for the head ends up in the body of the
block, see the Solaris example that i posted.

But you are right that i should probably adjust the in-line macros
(that is, .B, .I, .SM, .SB) as well, even though for them, the
damage is minor, wrong font at the worst - and even that is unlikely
to happen in practice, because why would anybody do something like

.B
three \c
bold \c
words
and then back to the default font.

rather than simply

.B three bold words
and then back to the default font.

?

I really hope that in manual pages, nobody does stunts like

.TH TEST 1 2017-05-02
.SH NAME
test \- descr
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B
three \c
.gcolor red
bold \c
.gcolor
words
and then back to the default font.

> Technically, Bjarni Ingi Gislason proposed these changes in GNU
> Savannah back in 2014.

True, sorry for forgetting that information in the commit message.

> But my hollering seems to be correlated with the commit date,
> so if there's blame to be shouldered, I'll accept my share.

Right, credit where credit is due, or blame where blame is due,
that is the question...  ;-)

Yours,
  Ingo